The University in a Post-Industrial, Post-Digital, and Post-Pandemic World (Part I)

Higher educationDigital innovationAcademic innovationDigital public humanities
Written By John Muthyala

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(Part 1)
By John Muthyala

Department of English, University of Southern Maine, April 2023

# The essay does not represent any position by USM, the UMaine System, or anyone associated with them; the author writes on his own behalf.

As digital technologies and globalization transform the production, analysis, archival, retrieval, and dissemination of knowledge and information, as the Covid pandemic upends health industries, medical practices, and social institutions, and as a global, post-industrial economy develops intensity, the university becomes fertile ground for disruption. Two questions gain significance:

What is the role of the university in a post-industrial, post-digital, and post-pandemic world?

How can the arts, humanities, and social sciences negotiate the realignments of knowledge and skills to thrive in an information-driven, STEM-based, knowledge economy? 

In responding to these questions, I focus on the University of Maine System (UMaine System) and the university and region where I work, the University of Southern Maine (USM) in Portland, the second largest in the System network, which was set up in 1968.[i] I briefly explore challenges currently facing Maine public higher education, as the UMaine System implements state-wide Unified Accreditation (UA) under the aegis of the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), in which all seven universities are accredited as a single unit. These entities make up the UMaine System network: University of Maine at Augusta, University of Maine at Farmington, University of Maine at Fort Kent, University of Maine at Machias, University of Maine at Orono, University of Maine at Presque Isle, University of Southern Maine, and the University of Maine School of Law.

The System describes each entity’s distinctive features,[ii] with the largest university, UMaine at Orono (northern Maine), also referred to as UMaine, highlighted with a Research 1 Carnegie Classification, and the second largest university, USM (southern Maine), designated as a public comprehensive university, distinctions that not only mark different institutional missions but the challenges of realizing them in the context of Unified Accreditation.[iii] I mention these two to underscore the historical north-south axis around which legislative mandates, policies, reports, white papers, and institutional practices seek economic viability and socio-political legitimacy for each entity in the System.

In February 2018, the Chronicle of Higher Education noted, “As a result, Maine has become a de facto laboratory for the future of sustainable public higher education.”[iv] The adverbial phrase “as a result” points to these factors:

●      Demographic decline is impacting enrollments, as fewer high school students go to college.

●      Multiple university campuses in the UMaine system have built-in redundancy.

●      60.9 % of Maine residents live in rural areas.[v]

●      Public investments in the university system are uneven and inconsistent.

●      College costs are increasing.

●      Student debt is growing out of control.

 These realities are especially challenging for USM, the state’s regional, public comprehensive university.[vi] Over the last decade, budget deficits led to layoffs and program closures. In 2014, facing a $16 million dollar deficit, USM eliminated fifty tenured and tenure-track positions and dozens of staff positions.[vii] In spring 2022, citing budget shortfalls, UMaine Farmington fired nine faculty members as nine others took early retirement, which “effectively wiped out UMF’s Women’s and Gender Studies division, the Philosophy and Religion department and the World Languages department. Three additional positions were eliminated in the Geography, Psychology and History departments.”[viii]

 Also, in spring 2022, after the presidential search of the University of Maine at Augusta led to the selection of a candidate, news that the search committee was kept in the dark by search consultants and the System about the candidate having faced no-confidence motions at the university where the person was serving led to the Faculty Senate passing a no-confidence motion against the Chancellor. Faculty Senates at USM, UMaine Farmington, and UMaine Machias did the same, while other university senates sent, to the Board of Trustees, letters supporting the motions.[ix] It is telling that although it supported other universities’ no-confidence resolutions, the UMaine faculty senate did not pass a no-confidence motion against the Chancellor. The BOT Chairperson, Trish Riley, publicly invited faculty to connect directly with the BOT to discuss concerns,[x] and Chancellor Dannel Malloy, to his credit, has taken significant steps to establish open communication lines by frequently visiting campuses across the state, and talking to university members individually and in groups.[xi]

A significant feature of Malloy’s tenure is his insistence on transparency, as he leads the Unified Accreditation effort: the System office set up a publicly accessibly website that served as a comprehensive repository of historical and contextual documents pertaining to UA.[xii] Malloy’s approach to institutional transformation through strategic planning has been to blend rank with talent, experience, and inclusivity, setting the framework for large-scale organizational change. Having granted unified accreditation to the UMaine System in 2020,[xiii] two years later in fall 2022, NECHE visited System universities, and issued a report on its findings of the System’s self-study;[xiv] the report, available online, marks a turning point for Maine public universities, as the System announced the first draft of its Strategic Plan in March 2023.

 At the heart of these developments are intense anxieties about the implications of Unified Accreditation (UA). Although many view UA as a new initiative pursued aggressively by Chancellor Malloy, the historic record tells a different story: in 1984, Governor Joseph E. Brennan charged a Visiting Committee to report on the UMaine System’s work across the state and offer recommendations for reform.[xv] In 2015, under Chancellor James Page, the System initiated formal discussions with the regional accrediting body (now NECHE, formerly NEASC) about One University with a single accreditation. Chancellor Malloy initiated a shift from One University to Unified Accreditation in 2019.[xvi] Supporting UA to spur innovation and growth, the Harold Alfond Foundation pledged $240 million over ten years to the UMaine System: $75 million to start the Maine College of Engineering, Computing, and Information Science (MCESIS); $55 million for a Portland-based Maine Graduate and Professional Center to “integrate accredited business, law, and public service under one roof,”; $20 million “for student retention and success initiatives”; and $90 million “to upgrade athletic facilities at UMaine.”[xvii] A promising development supporting the arts is the new announcement that “the University of Southern Maine received approval to build a 40,000 square foot center for the arts on its Portland campus,” an approval affirmed in the authorization for “the school to spend up to $63 million on the new project.” [xviii]

Three concerns stand out:

●      Comprehensive centralization of administrative functions at the System level, which risks academic centralization as a downstream effect.

●      The overt privileging of the flagship campus, UMaine at Orono, with other universities becoming dependent on it, willy-nilly, for their fortunes.

●      Segmented investment strategies prioritizing STEM, Business, and Health, with the arts and humanities becoming adjunct fields. 

Unless we understand such dynamics, the anxieties they create and the missteps they produce, progress and stability in Maine universities will be stymied; it’s time for honest and difficult discussions—in the digital public commons—about the futures of Maine public higher education.

In summer 2022, Ryan Low, Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, UMaine System, presented a budget report to the BOT, sharing sobering information about the future, as Portland Press Herald journalist Lana Cohen reports: “The system started off this financial year, which began in July, with a deficit of nearly $19 million. and used reserves and stabilization funds to close the budget gap. Officials project that in the best-case scenario the system will have to close budget deficits of between $8.5 million to $14 million each year over the next four years. In the worst-case scenario, it will have to close budget deficits ranging from $17 million to $38 million each year over the next four years. The system’s budget for this financial year is $616.7 million.”[xix] Cohen further points out: “The University of Southern Maine and UMaine Augusta are the only schools in the system that came into this financial year without budget deficits. They are anticipated to maintain either small deficits or small surpluses in the years to come.”[xx] Cohen also reports that as of June 2022, fall undergraduate enrollments were down by 6.6% compared to last year, and 12% compared to five years ago. Freshmen enrollments across the System dropped 20% compared to last year; these figures can “have severe and far-reaching economic and social consequences.”[xxi]

As reported in late fall 2022 by the Office of Enrollment Management, USM saw a 2% increase in undergraduate applications (7,158) but was “down 12.8% in new undergraduate enrollment.”[xxii] However, USM saw its retention rate increase to 67.4%; students with double majors retained at 80%. Special mention was made about USM students leaving for other institutions in the 2015-2021 period: 1,032 went to Southern Maine Community College; 414 to the University of Maine; 355 to Southern New Hampshire University; 294 to the University of Maine at Augusta; and 226 to Central Maine Community College. In these six years, 6,000 students moved on from USM to other institutions, with 3,090 moving out of Maine.[xxiii]

These patterns and issues provide the context for the questions posed at the beginning:

What is the role of the university in a post-industrial, post-digital, and post-pandemic world?

How can the arts, humanities, and social sciences negotiate the realignments of knowledge and skills to thrive in an
information-driven, STEM-based, knowledge economy? 

Before moving on to explain the terms post-industrial, post-digital, and post-pandemic, let me comment briefly on an issue that has concerned many in Maine regarding higher education’s impact on the state economy, because it gains urgency in the post-industrial economy of the contemporary moment.

Maine and the post-industrial economy

In 2019 Joan Ferrini-Mundy, President of UMaine and University of Maine at Machias, and Vice Chancellor for Research, UMaine System, and Jason Charland, Director of Research Development, UMaine, released the Research and Development Plan FY 2020-2024, produced in consultation with all the presidents of Maine’s public universities. The report begins thus: “We propose that the University of Maine System advance three R & D goals for the State of Maine over the next 10 years:

“1. Make Maine the best state in the nation in which to live, work, and learn by 2030.

2. Establish an innovation-driven Maine economy for the 21st century.

3. Prepare the knowledge-and-innovation workforce for Maine.”[xxiv]

 The terms “innovative-driven” and “knowledge-and-innovation workforce” are directly related to the post-industrial economy and the Two Maines paradigm.

Two Maines: Diverse Economies and Cultural Zones

There are two Maines, northern and southern. Despite sharing a geographic terrain bounded by federal and indigenous tribal boundaries and policies, these two Maines have, over many decades, evolved into different societies. Writing in 2005, Sarah Schweitzer observes, “But downturns in the forestry and agriculture industries have sent thousands of northerners fleeing south seeking employment, leaving the area with a shrunken and aging population.  .  . By contrast, southern Maine, with its outlet malls and ocean-side resorts, has enjoyed a windfall. An influx of newcomers, many from Massachusetts, has helped create a thriving service-based economy.” She cites Charles Colgan, Professor Emeritus at the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service, USM: ''It is part of the transformation from industrial to post-industrial, which works to the advantage of the urban areas."[xxv]

Elsewhere, arguing for new models of socio-economic development, Colgan says that instead of viewing the rapid growth in the south as a threat to be contained by the north, we should examine national and global economic shifts so that we can develop a healthy tension between conserving and progressing on multiple socio-economic fronts. The north’s fisheries, forestries, and agricultural sectors saw downturns, while the south’s business, residential, and economic sectors grew in response to migration patterns, national economic shifts, tourist preferences, spending patterns, and coastal attractions. Colgan says, “Maine is an urban economy. We have to start thinking about ourselves as an urban place.”[xxvi]

Liam Sigaud, like Colgan, points to “Two Maines.” In terms of income disparity, income distribution, education levels, population migration, aging, and economic well-being, “there are indeed vast economic differences between the “Two Maines”— so much so that if they were separate states, they would consistently fall at opposite ends of state rankings on key metrics. It’s easy to gloss over these differences when discussing state policies, but ignoring the reality will only exacerbate existing inequality and alienation.”[xxvii]

More recently, discussing Ukrainian flags dotting Maine front yards across the state, reporter Hannah Beech, writing in the New York Times, notes that Mainers, familiar with harsh winters and the hardscrabble of daily life, feel affinity with those suffering hardship in Ukraine due to the Russia-Ukraine war. She cites Tom McCarthy, resident of Skowhegan, who observes, “The majority of people in Maine know what struggle is, from the pulp woods to the potato fields, to blueberry patches to lobster waters.” However, the two-Maines theory rears its head in Beech’s comment, “Maine is politically divided between its southern coast and a vast interior, and it is one of two states where districts cast their electoral college votes separately. In the 2020 presidential election, President Biden took the coast and former President Donald J. Trump the interior.”[xxviii]

Regardless of the varied emphasis on the Two Maines idea, it is important to follow what Colgan identifies as the shift from the industrial to the post-industrial economy. Different regions in the state have, historically, grown with different economic sectors, with varied impact in the state. In the twenty-first century, revitalizing Maine’s economy should not mean restoring the greatness of the north’s economic sectors or unreflectively extending the south’s sectors into the north. Instead, we must understand how the post-industrial economy is affecting both northern and southern economies.

In her “Our USM” fora, Jacqueline Edmondson, President, University of Southern Maine, highlighted the challenges facing disadvantaged students. She drew on Jennifer Morton’s Moving Up Without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility to underscore the barriers in rural communities that might prevent or slowdown efforts to pursue higher education.[xxix] These have strong implications for public universities serving the needs of peoples across the state of Maine.

End of Part 1

In Part 1 of this essay, I provided the institutional historical context for Maine’s public universities obtaining Unified Accreditation, highlighted concerns, pointed to current budgetary and enrollment challenges, and brought into focus Maine’s diverse economies shaped by regional culture. In Part II, I will explain the terms post-industrial, post-pandemic, and post-digital, comment on their relevance to our efforts to reimagine public higher education in Maine, and offer suggestions for academic innovation.

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The University in a Post-Industrial, Post-Digital, and Post-Pandemic World (Part II)
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John Muthyala
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